This is why we gave up Youtube officially:

YouTube will cut parts from your video now. Imagine that. In this case it is from a TROM II snippet that @Alexio shared on our "legacy" YouTube channel. Mind you the documentary is free for everyone and also educational, so in a sane world it should be fair use for whatever media we've used.

We are so thankful that @PeerTube exists! We can post all of our videos on our Peertube channel videos.trom.tf/c/trom/videos without being afraid that anything will be banned or cut out.

And to no surprise Facebook does the same:

Banned the same video in several countries....

Basically we are not using YouTube or Facebook anymore since 2 years ago. Only @Alexio and @Georgi post there from time to time, mirroring our Friendica or Peertube. We do that since there are still many people following TROM on those platforms unfortunately. We are always trying to bring them to the fediverse and to these sane platforms, but change is hard...

So for now at least if some of our content can be mirrored to these trade-platforms while encouraging those following us there to change their online habits and use these other trade-free alternative platforms, then so be it.

But it is another reminder of the stupidity of our world, emerged from the practice of trade where even the reproducible at no cost digital content is "owned" and traded, so that ideas like copyright are invented to protect them. Terrible.

Te digital is abundant so we should not even put restrictions in place. But you can't do that in a trade society since so many would take advantage of that for their own gain.

#TradeRuinsEverything #capitalism #copyright #facebook #youtube #tromlive

Hello dear people,

Let's keep it very brief.

Please help us pay for our yearly backups.

Every year we have to pay for a 4TB backup plan. This means, everything we have (from our documentaries and videos, to our books, or our websites) are all backed-up in a safe and encrypted place. This also includes our TROM.tf services, some 2TB of files, most of which are yours, the ones using TROM.tf. Your Nextcloud files, your Peertube videos, your encrypted Matrix conversations and so forth.

Thus, I ask you, to please consider helping us pay for this, since we are so low on money.

It only costs 300 Euros and we have to pay it in 2 weeks.

The campaign is here >>> tromsite.com/trom-backup/

This is a new newsletter system!

For the first time ever we are able to run our own newsletter system. In the beginning we've used MailChimp or other trade-based services, to then move to a Wordpress plugin solution that never worked well. This is the real deal and it makes everything so much better: from sending this newsletters to managing whatever lists we need. Therefore keep in mind that we are now sending the newsletters from newsletter.tromsite.com/

If you want to unsubscribe simply use the Unsubscribe button at the footer of this email.

A new video series in the making. We hope....

Starting the next month I plan to work on a new video series that should run indefinitely (I hope). It may take some time before I start to make and then post the videos, but I am convinced that I have to do this. I will give you more information once I am close to that moment.

I still feel like I have more energy in me to put up a fight, despite the fact that I do not get enough financial support to help me focus fully on TROM. I will have to spend more of my energy trying to trade and make some money in order to support myself and the project, and that kills me inside little by little. But this is a war for me, a war with this trade-based society. And I will get harmed, and I will have to give up on some projects if I cannot get enough support, but I will continue one way or another.

Much respect for those who are still interested in what we do at TROM and to those who can afford to support us.

Cheers,

Tio

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We have a brand new TROMnews website - tromnews.com/

The plugin that we've used for TROMnews for the past many years stopped working so we had to find a new one. When that happened I was sure I will have to let go of this website, simply because I need to focus on other things, especially personal stuff. If I were to get at least half the financial support that we need for TROM, then I could focus on these projects more.

But anyway, after talking to Sasha I realized that the website is indeed important, despite the fact that I am sure not many are using it. We will talk more about that. But first:

TROMnews is more work than you may think.

The idea is to pull news/videos/photos/etc from many online sources and coalesce them all into a website that makes sense. But choosing the sources, finding and RSS feed for them, and all that, is not as easy. Plus, some do not have an RSS feed so I have to use other services to create it on the fly. Also, the way I pull the RSS feeds is not arbitrary. For example I cannot grab all of the videos from a Youtube channel since that would include the absolutely retarded "shorts", so I have to tell the RSS to only pull the videos that are at least 2 minutes long. And so forth....

I ended up with over 200 sources: from websites to Youtube, from subReddits to playlists. I want to make sure we pull a featured image for each (or most posts), and to not overwhelm everyone with whatever I pull. Like I choose to pull from the subReddit "Sky Porn" only the images that have over X amount of votes. This way we make sure that add only a few a week, but the good ones. The amount of X in this case depends from subReddit to subReddit - I test these to see what's the best value.

Now you get 200 feeds that each can pull several items every hour or so. A server may struggle with so much stuff. And so the old plugin disabled many feeds daily, and I had to reactivate them to make them update...one by one, manually.

On top of all of this, I had filters for many of these feeds as to what posts can pull or exclude, based on keywords. Just to make it more relevant.

I use TROMnews daily, and so are a few friends. But I bet no one else uses it.

I want to stay in touch with what is happening in the world, but not the world of politics (the nonsense world), I want to know about science, tech, and the natural world mostly. I can so that via an RSS reader on my local machine, but my goal with TROMnews was always to provide a tool for others to stay informed and sane.

I started this project exactly 10 years ago. Because I feared that if people are idiots and feed their brains with bullshit then we have 0 chances to ever change anything in this world. Humans live inside of their brains, and if what's inside is bullshit, then they are bullshitters and we live in different worlds altogether, despite being on the same planet, inside the same reality. How can we build the future together?

If some think that gods made them, others that money is real, or that climate change is an invention, then we are fucked. And such a website makes it easy to keep your brain sane.

For me no other website is enough to use it as my news source. From BBC to PBS, or Scientific American, and so forth, they are plagued by politics and promotional articles. It is a mess.

Anyway, I spent many years trying to find the best sources, and subcategories on some good news websites that were still relevant, and I wanted them all in one place. This is why I use TROMnews. It is my main, and many times only, source of brain-food.

10 years ago when I released it I had some big hopes for it, because people were still able to choose stuff for themselves. Like they were intentionally visiting websites. Nowadays the vast majority of people are on maximum 5 platforms (Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, or Instagram). And they are all fed whatever these companies want.

A vomit of ads and retarded content. And people stay, and eat. Scroll through an endless stream of whatever they are fed with.

Sick.

So I know that I cannot make people use TROMnews. And I do not care anymore. I and a few friends use it. Plus it is a very interesting website. That's enough for me.

The new website needs more work, but it is a bit more "interesting" in my view.

Before the website was simply displaying the same kind of cards for all categories and that's all. A bit boring. Even I was not that motivated to read the news - too many of the same cards, too many news. Now the homepage looks like a news website, highlighting every category.

We even have a Recommended Documentary section that automatically pulls from VideoNeat. :)

Every page is a bit more unique to emphasize whatever category is showcasing. Here's a cool photo I just found on TROMnews:

Freaking spider! :) - that's what I love about TROMnews - it is a bundle of interesting stuff, ranging from important news, to wonderful photos or super interesting videos. It is my place, and I am not giving up on it :P.

The advantage now is that I can have a lot more control over the individual items. I can probably add a proper search and even allow others to subscribe to our own feed. So that you can subscribe to our TROMnews NEWS. How cool....

I still need to add the Dark mode and tweak it for mobile screens, but also monitor it to make sure it all works well. I came across a bunch of issues with the auto-updating of sources so let's see if it is able to keep up with updating from over 200 rss feeds.

I also lack the ability to filter the feeds based on keywords, but I can live with that... What I'd like is the ability to showcase from where an item is. Like who posted this or that, as it was before. I can only do that if I buy the pro-bro version... So if I get enough financial support for TROM I will make TROMnews a bit better.

Oh, when I was searching for a replacement WordPress plugin for TROMnews I came across many RSS Aggregators. And all, without exception form my findings, are geared towards making more money. Of course.... Who is using them like I do, to pull science/tech/interesting news for all to see? No ads, no bs...

But I was aware of this, it was always the case. People use these plugins to pull stuff from other websites into their own, to then inject ads and make money. In turn destroying the internet, which has become a garbage bin made of vomited and re-vomited content. And now it is getting easier:

Welcome to the Internet 3.0. The complete fuckery, a tsunami of nonsense.

TROMnews is a little place of sane stuff. I hope some people appreciate it.

#tromlive

This is not a real human, it is an "AI Model". Meaning, a computer generated image/persona. And this "model" has over 120.000 follows on Instagram. The creators of "it" are making thousands of euros a month from advertising products via the "model". Basically generating new images with the same creature, but wearing different brands and so forth. (source)

Many people are aware of this, and yet still "follow" these "AI models". Probably humans are already used to live in a fake online world where even the humans are so filtered you can rarely depict any reality from their online lives.

This insanity can be easily understood and predicted if we understand this trade-based society where everyone is forced and incentivized to trade. Every piece of technology will be used for trade purposes. In the process a lot of waste and idiots are being created. Unfortunately.

It is all about trading this for that. This gives rise to consumption, to privacy invasive devices, to pollution and slavery, to what many call as capitalism. But the word "capitalism" gives too much credit to this primitive society where the main practice is that of trade. This is why we avoid to use that term in our TROM materials. It is deceptive and loaded with preconceptions.

#tromlive

This November Facebook is rolling out a subscription model for EU. Their options: pay 10 Euros a month and you will not see ads on Facebook, or as they say it:

Let's quickly unpack this shitshow.

For the past 10.000 years humans have used a practice to move stuff around the globe: trade. You take care of my sheep, I give you cheese. In time it evolved into specialized work, the notion of debt (trade for it later) and the invention of "currency". A worthless resource that humans imagine to have value. Such as gold, shells, coins, etc..

You do not have to build houses for others in return for some clothes and food, you will get a currency in return for your work. In time humans started to lose track of what is really happening in this society of trade and then believed that they work for the currency itself. Like you work for money. Despite the fact that not a single human works for money, they work for what money gets them (food, comfort, access, power, etc..).

Therefore, from economists to regular workers, journalists or historians, everyone got tricked and confused by the ways the trade practice mutated over the past thousands of years.

Nowadays it is even more confusing because one can trade their attention (watch ads) in return for accessing some digital content. Or agree to let their data being mined in return for other services. Therefore a currency is often not needed, but the practice of trade is the same as it was 10.000 years ago.

So today humans somehow think that if something does not cost money (or other currencies) that something is FREE. This is almost like saying that someone is not dead unless it has a death certificate.

If we were to understand this simple fact of life, we could cut through a lot of the crap that is raining down in today's society. We could easily ask the question: What Am I Trading? Like: what do I have to give in return for using Facebook?

And the answer is simple: you need to give them your attention (watch ads), your data, and your currency to either pay to reach your followers and so forth, or pay for a monthly ads-free experiencing.

As you can see in no scenario Facebook is free. NONE.

This is what TROM is trying so hard to make visible: the invisible part of our society. The fact that TRADE is at the core of how this society works, and how this force of trade is making us all complete jerks, charlatans, and abusers. We need to understand what the problem is, in order to come up with any solution.

Understand first!

#tromlive